My deepest thoughts for the day

If you have been reading my blog than you know I have been reading "Chronicle of A Plague, Revisted: AIDS and its Aftermath" by Andrew Holleran. I did a post with a few quotes from his book because I felt it spoke volumnes of what I have been trying to figure out for years. With that said I would like to share some more with you this morning........

"Looking at some of the guests I can tell which ones are celibate; which ones are having less, more cautious sex; and which ones are going right on with the ld ways. It has nothing to do with one's degree of personal exposure to the dying; it has to do with temperament, with the way different minds respond to the same facts. We face each other, after all, over freshly dug graves. There are ghosts among us. We are teh actresses who meet in the ruined theater in Follies. We're teh tourists who have been admited to an exhibit of our own former lives".

"Were AIDS a disease which one contracted, brought death within forty-eight hours of exposure, it would be far more easily avoided illness-but because it is not, because it is invisible, unknown, for such a long period of time, because it is something people got before they even knew it existed (with each passing year, the time gets longer), the Fear of AIDS is limitless....There's a memory--of an evening, an incident--to justify every fear. And nothing exists that will guarntee the fearful that even if they are functioning now they will not get caught in the future".

This topic has been on my mind so much the last few days, and that is why I haven't posted more, it seems at moments to invade cell of thought I have. I have been in so many ways so blessed beyond words--loving, caring supportive parents, same for my brother who was in the very early years of my own illness my rock and salvation. As far as my love life I have been gifted with three very wonderful and supportive men who have loved me more than I can begin to describe. My health the last 5 years has has it severe downs and than leveled off to where I am better. I have a nice home with Jim, a business that is doing fairly well considering the economy, two incredibly loving Shi Itzu's. As a freind pointed out last night--who could ask for anything more.

So many of my gay friends never made it past two years with this illness, so many never lived to 40 and many have never had as well as I have. Thats where this idea of this disease being international hit me--the starving, dying child on a dirt floor who parents have already been killed by AIDS with no doctor, no hopital, no medicines, no home and NO HOPE! It just overwhelms me that yes we have come so far in twenty years but we have so far to go yet as well, and I hope to live long enough to see it.